Press Releases

Department of Energy (DOE) awarded a one million dollar contract to the Minerals Refining and Rare Earth Consortium (MRREC), of which Virginia Tech is a member. The consortium consists of two other universities, University of Kentucky and West Virginia University. This award is one the three selected by the DOE.

The $1 million DOE funding will be used to support the Phase 1 activities, which include laboratory tests, preliminary plant design, economic analysis, and others. In about a year’s time, the three awardees will compete in the Phase 2 down-selection process. The winner will have an opportunity to build and test a small plant that can economically produce salable rare earth products from coal and coal byproducts.

The three universities participating in the project has been working together as part of the Center for Advanced Separation Technologies (CAST) – a consortium established in 2001. Together, the three universities produced a large number of commercially successful separation technologies.

Pleased with the DOE award, Congressman Morgan Griffith (R-VA) said, “Virginia Tech’s team, led by Dr. Yoon, has valuable expertise in rare earth extraction technologies. I will continue to do what I can to support the impressive team he has built over the years. Their innovative ideas could lead to a major breakthrough and new use for coal. I am frequently impressed with the results of their hard work, and I look forward to a successful outcome of this opportunity.”

Virginia Tech Professor Roe-Hoan Yoon said, “It was the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) who conceived the idea of extracting rare earth elements (REEs) from coal and coal byproducts.” He added, “The rare earth elements are actually not rare as they say. What makes them rare is the difficulty in separation.”  Virginia Tech’s newly patented technology known as hydrophobic and hydrophilic separation (HHS) may be useful to recover the small rare earth mineral particles from the byproduct streams generated in many coal preparation plants operating in Central Appalachia.

Dr. Yoon added, “A success of the project should help the coal companies in the region, as well as helping the country to minimize its imports of the materials that are critical for renewable energies, manufacturing, and national defense.”

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